#is it satire or is it the Witcher?

[mantra4ia]

I mean no offense to the people who enjoyed "The Witcher" Season 3: Vol 1 on Netflix. No judgement. And also no offense to the cast and crew who I am sure worked hard to bring this to the screen.

I love the Witcher, mostly from the books and some gameplay, so from my own personal perspective...

What in the actual hell did Netflix do?!

There's so much eloquent dialogue in the source material to draw upon and this steaming pile of ****e is what they came up with? It telegraphs so much without a whiff of subtlety or craft— not unlike Sabrina in 3x5— that I want to puke, the only exception being that Yarpen Zigrin is still no nonsense and true to form.

Emhyr, as is evidenced by his cringe, overlong speeches and dull drawl, is not written as cunning or menacing by any stretch of the imagination as he ought to be, and the lack of a strong villain does nothing to drive the pace of the season.

Why are we waxing on about Vissena to try and strum up audience feels? We don't need to revisit that unless it serves a purpose for the characters. It doesn't. If the audience has been watching any of the previous two seasons, we don't need Geralt's childhood memories of his mother to impress upon us that he takes newfound parenthood seriously and would spill blood and make sacrifices for his family.

If that weren't painful enough, Yennefer — who we know is cunning when she schemes— lacks all of her razor edged wit when "groveling" before the Brotherhood to form a conclave. The recycled dialogue with Tissaia about chaos and control has lost its potency, as lukewarm as the mages' council of armchair tapping, and even her speeches to Ciri like "my ugly one" have so much wasted potential because there's a speed run montage about how much Yen and Cirilla care for eachother in episode 1 rather than letting us growing into the emotions ourselves, so that by the time we get to Yennefer disclosing her past, the emotion is lost. Also, Cirilla is supposed to be in a little awe of Yen and her power of influence, which is what makes "ugly one" so endearing, because it's the ends way of saying that Cirilla is powerful but magic isn't all she is / she doesn't need to rely on it like the mages rest on prolonged youth. It's her way of saying I love you, and for all the exposition that season three uses to elaborate feelings, this most essential part is completely lost. It's like we're playing house with emotions that haven't been earned their screen moment. "Lilac and gooseberries, now that I can tolerate," but I cannot abide these trash conversations.

These were the action sequences, the fight choreography, and the monster concept visualization they came up with? Like, for example, a failing mass of conjoined limbs and disembodied heads! The idea of Ciri's doppelganger from the books has been so corrupted.

On top of that, the cuts from scene to scene are so rough it's like whiplash. Chase scene - recycled Geralt /Ciri hug - dark portal nonsense - crash through ceiling. No finesse.

The Belletyn festival, which is so meaningful and beautifully described in the books, was butchered in execution of costume (Yen's is a season 1 throwback but never underwhelming way), with ridiculous "masks" (it irks me so much that Yennefer tells Cirilla had to cover her eyes and hair for a low profile and then we speed cut to the next scene where neither occurs and the costume department decides that they aren't even going to attach Cirilla's mask to her face, she just carries it around in her hand because that makes sense), unnecessary mazes to separate our characters and engineer a sense of peril, the whole lot. They used Belletyn as a setup to engineer a subsequent bait scene, which was an appallingly insult to intelligence and fight choreography. PS: Yen can I do more than throw a knife, can we please utilize her a little better?

Speaking of choreography, Ciri descending from mid air to stab the CGI aeschna in 3x4 with the overlong shot pull of monster blood on her face was so poorly edited I wanted to fast forward the entire episode thereafter.

Lastly, this farce for humor is what they came up with?! They made layered source characters like Dijkstra into single line fodder, and they wasted so much time on sitcom rubbish like Queen Hedwig's Redanian funeral, and Phillipa's bedroom shenanigans, and Fringilla as a drunken poison tester. I want to slap someone. It's as if the whole of season 3 thus far is a live-action adaptation of Ciri and Jaskier's satire of Yen and Geralt. Except that no one left the audience in the joke.

Also, for a series called The Witcher there is surprisingly little in the way of meaningful dialogue and action for Geralt to do, and that's a shame

I'm angry.

Season 1 was fantastic, season 2 was good but with notable divergence to character integrity, and Season 3 so far is the refuse pile of Aedd Gynvael. The only highlight was Ciri telling Valdo Marx to shut up, like I wish I could do for the rest of the dialogue in the series. After "Sherrawedd" I kept thinking to myself, it will get better. Ironically Sherwood was probably the best episode so far because at least it kept the essence of idea in "dear friend" from the literature as a foundation. After which it kept sinking down into chaos.

But more than angry, I'm disappointed. I'm sad that the Yennefer/Jaskier frenemy dynamic ("Hello again witch) —a highlight of season 2— has been shirked; the only decent byproduct of which is the Ciri/Jaskier relationship. And I'm depressed that this is Henry Cavill's sendoff as Geralt.

[madame-helen]

[hanzajesthanza]

i think the witcher books (and the stories to saga transition) are good and fine to be adapted into audiovisual media (e.g., tv/movie), but only if the audience (meaning, an audience previously unfamiliar with the IP) is actually there for what it’s about. and can be encouraged to keep an open mind for what it will be.

because it seems many people get into it from the premise of “mutated monster killer kills monsters” (even though, if you read the short stories closely, they’re not about that at all, that’s only the literal aspect of them, and some aren’t even about monsters at all??). and then become disappointed that geralt isn’t just slaying beasts left and right for five novels (or seasons?) straight

if you want to have an audience that’s there for what the series is, then… just… tell them what they’re sitting down for!

to potential readers and viewers of such an adaptation, it just needs to be better communicated right off the bat what the story is about. and no one can do that except the already existing fans who have read and like the story and know what parts they love the most.

stop selling it on the basis of ‘ooo dark fantasy where people swear sometimes’ and actually look at what it is about (also, beyond that it is fantasy) and you’ll have your answer.

[ghostlylicious]

what i said to marina was so stupid i cringed at myself. no i'm not a multishipper (only in some circumstances) and yes i'm afraid of vernonciri now bc of you. i would like to apologize to her (bc she def won't apologize to me 😍) and that what i said sounded stupid bc i have a mental illness where i can't process how to deal with degenerates on the internet. i would like your forgiveness marina. but just let urself have vernonciri and let me have iornon and ciri/avallac'h or ciri/no one she's an independent girlboss

(i hope she doesn't see this but if she does i'll just block her so 😭)

(and if she does see this. yes. yes i know avallac'h is much older than ciri. what i said abt ciri n roche was stupid i know. but like i said i have an illness where i legit don't know how to deal with bullies 😍😭)

[blackcatsatire]

[totallynotajaskierhater]

In my brain I can see Geralt being a huge softie to animals. Him and roaches relationship>> It was so cute! tell me im lying when I say he wouldn’t be an animal person because I think I’m 100% right

I think he would be a major dog guy. He probably wouldn’t mind having a cat though. Like he rescues a little baby kitten from hunger and nourishes it back to health ☹️

He has a shit name picking system though so he would probably name the cat another insect name or something you wouldn’t expect like at all. Either name the cat roach because he can’t think of another name or he would probably name the cat Geralt because he’s a little egotistical, love him though!

I think he would be an animal rescuer, he would take in pets if they were injured or needed desperate help. Any animal really, no limits. I do think he would be afraid of some type of animal, maybe ferrets because of how long they are. He would get confused and hold a screaming match with Jaskier because Jaskier says their cute but Geralt is like “No. Why are they so long? Why? I don’t understand. How do they grow? How?”

silly ideas I got <3

[tankertalk]

TankerTWEETland comix #1164 - "The Witcher & Bard Jaskie Visit Taco Bell...” (9/17/2022)

[abeautifulblog]

Ngl my first reaction to Jaskier being canonically bi was “oh I CANNOT WAIT to see how poorly they handle this”

I swear, ever since the Hemsworthening, I feel like every time I learn something new about this show I'm checking the date, all, is it April Fools again already? Look at the URL, because surely this is a satire site? Is there a camera, am I being punk'd? Am I having a stroke?? Those sure are some words they said in some order!

I made my peace with the Radovid thing -- I went and breathed into a paper bag for a bit, and remembered that everything feels catastrophic when you're running on three hours of sleep, and also that (1) game-Radovid != book-Radovid and (2) LOL, IT'S NOT LIKE TWN IS FAITHFUL TO BOOK-CANON EITHER!

Reading what they've said about it so far, it really sounds like they just made up an OC to ship Jaskier with (probably hoping The Gays would SHUT UP ABOUT GERASKIER, SHUT UP ABOUT GERASKIER) and named him Radovid, and he's going to bear no resemblance whatsoever to any previous Radovids who may have appeared in this franchise.

Which again begs the question of whyyyyyyy did they not just invent a new guy?? Why THIS GUY, of ALL GUYS, to arbitrarily assign as Jaskier's love interest, since it's a pairing with no basis in any canon, a pairing that book-fans met with polite confusion and game-fans met with visceral repulsion.

Even if TWN Radovid winds up being a completely new character, as I expect he will, it's still baffling. The showrunners know that a good portion of their viewer base is coming from the game -- they have been actively courting the Witcher III crowd in their marketing since the get-go -- so even if the only thing the Radovids have in common is their name, why choose to evoke a character with such utterly rancid associations? And then repurpose him as a love interest for Jaskier, of all people? o_O

idek, man.

The curse of knowledge, I suppose -- because if I weren't familiar with game-Radovid, I could be out there partying with all the people who are just like, BI JASKIER CONFIRMED, WOO HOO!! 🎉🎉

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[themichelvictor-blog]

Spoilers for Invincible comic and season 2

Man, they sure cut the scene in which Mark shows self awarness and human reaction, and replaced it with melodrama shit with PTSD. Which doesn't make much sense in the show as his ass got handed even before Omni-man fight by Battler Beast. Show really undermines Mark's actual character of teenager with an ego due to his powerhouse status and instead replace it with sad puppy who exists to soak up pain for entertainment of people and be nothing more than megaphone to themes. I was never a fan of Invincible, but I think it is tragic that book which mocked all superhero comic bs and melodrama is now a prime example of all tropes of TV superhero shows filled into one less than mid animated package.

It's not the only scene, in the show Mark "goes serious" and threatens with his Omni-man heritage with music and close up, "subtlety" reinforcing his "dark side". When in the comic Mark casually mocks him and uses snark to out logic dude to free him. Which is pretty much who Mark is. Overpowered teenager with attitude and who use basic human logic. That's the appeal and show's Mark's exists either in ":( stop punching me I'm pathetic" or "I'm all angsty now, because we are serious show :|" when the comic shows his gradual growth into taking stuff serious (and fucking it up) way better and natural. For me, Invincible show represents people confusing sincerety with sad music and self importance. When in reality, cynicism and joking attitude can be the most sincere, in fact, it's kind of the idea with "the absence of pretence, deceit, or hypocrisy." being pretty much Invincible's appeal as satire of superhero stuff, while having some respect for it. Invincible show isn't sincere in slightest, otherwise Amber character wouldn't make 180 because of backlash and creator wouldn't say her controversial moment is "probably a mistake". Whole show just screams attempt of being Netflix melodrama during Daredevil success and using anti-Marvel status (no matter how idiotic it is) as selling point for folk who don't know better. We had same shit with Sherlock and with CDPR having a cult of simps post Witcher 3. Will it matter? Will show actually leave impact or just be dropped like other overhyped projects? I don't know, but I said my piece.

[limerental]

I'm reading the Witcher books for the first time and I just wanted to ask: did you have any difficulty enjoying your time reading them? It says in your bio that you're a Witcher books enjoyer, but have they ever been difficult to swallow at any point for you? I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm getting through by the skin of my teeth. Like that weird shtick with Dandelion during the dragon hunt, or the way Triss was acting during her time in Kaer Morhen and in regards to Geralt in general. I'm still in Blood of Elves, but I fear more moments I'm going to dislike are coming as I go on. I really want to catch up on the events that've only been hinted at in the games, but God it's been hard, and I just want to know if other people have experienced this or if it's just me. Do you have any advice? Sorry for the long ask, thanks for your time!

Oh I don't think you're alone tbh, my initial impression of the books from others when I was freshly in the fandom was that they weren't worth reading because of those moments. The books fully are written by an old white European dude in the 90s, and I don't think the translation does it any favors at times.

But no, I personally didn't have trouble continuing the books for those reasons, because the characters and the story overall and the method of story-telling fully gripped me. You just have to discount some stuff as written by a man disease to embrace the rest frankly. Of course, there is stuff I hate and reject. And it's all down to your tolerance.

Some people find Ciri's story later on to be bleak torture porn, but I don't think that that's a fair assessment. I love Ciri's story very dearly as a story of defiance and trauma and survival. You may disagree, who knows!

A lot of my love for the books comes from the potential of rolling around in a really diverse, open-ended canon that's basically 20 different stories in a trenchcoat but the dark comedy satirical tone of the books also gives me permission to take any of it as seriously or as flippantly as I want. There's a lot of vague politics and a lot of "anachronisms" and a lot of silly fantasy tropes and a lot of characters that exist purely to tell someone else's story and a lot of commentary on the fantasy genre as a whole.

And yeah, there's nipples. There's a lot of nipples. Sorry.

[yuri-goth]

hi @charlottan, book tag game :3

Favorite books: It is so so hard for me to pick favourites. uhhhhhh... Night Watch by Pratchett, and honestly I could put a lot of Pratchett's books on here. but I won't. Wiedźmin Sapkowskiego, a lot of polish romanticism, satire, and war nonfiction; Sienkiewicz, Mickiewicz, Krasicki, Białoszewski, Borowski. A lot of Brandon Sanderson books; mistborn came to mind first

Favorite authors: a lot were mentioned above. Pratchett is probably the highest up there.

Favorite genres: fantasy, post-apocalyptic (or what I like to call: post post-apocalyptic) and historic nonfiction. Yuri.

Book(s) you’re currently reading: Sideways in time by Murray Leinster, After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz, Macbeth by Shakespeare (plays count, shut up)

Books on your to read list: waaah too many to mention. I still have like 8 ones I've picked up from various used bookstores, my library holds currently are for The Terror by Dan Simmons, Hamlet (particularly choice audiobook), & The city and the city by China Miéville.

Books you loved as a child: Felix, Net i Nika Rafała Kosika, Animorphs by Katherine Applegate, Eragon by Christopher Paolini, Strrraszna Historia (various authors)

Preferred book length: with how I get INTO a book and refuse to put it down until it's over; I wanna say like. 100-150k words??? I dunno tho, I also like small books I can devour in one day, and I also like Project Books.

Books you couldn’t finish: I generally don't bother to remember things that I didn't enjoy or at least disliked in an interesting way. The most recent book I didn't finish was a 2 dollar used bookstore pickup Falling off the map: some lonely places of the world by Pico Iyer. the premise was amazing but then it just ended up being a bunch of British privileged takes on people the author clearly deemed as lesser. HOW IS ICELAND OR CUBA "FORGOTTEN"???? I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE TINY TOWNS, ACTUALLY INTERESTING THINGS, NOT WHOLE FUCKING CULTURES YOU FUC-

Fiction or nonfiction: as a Writer I lean fiction 95%, and as such read a lot of it and learn from a lot of it, but also as someone who was always interested in history of People's, not armies, I've read a lot of nonfiction; journals and such. Both are great, recently I've been on a larger nonfiction kick tho

Buy, borrow from library, or read online: I'm sadly also a buycel, I love physical books. However, I'm also huge on audiobooks, and used to use my kindle a lot. In reality my sortof. division would be: buy from used bookstores, borrow audiobooks from your local libraries, steal ebooks and put them onto a cracked eReader as last resort.

Author you’ve read the most of, but DON’T recommend: I dunno! I mean, hm. I don't know how the Witcher translations are, translating from a nice and juicy language into English is lossy as hell so those version gotta be mid and I would not recommend anyone learn Polish unless you have a damn good reason.

Favorite book character: Can I put a cop on here? cause first character I thought of was Vimes from Pratchett's city watch. He's complicated and a bastard. honestly, a lot of Pratchett's characters. Angua, Carrot, Vetinari even.

If you at some point stopped reading but then started again, what book/books got you into reading again: Gideon the ninth :) I used to read 2-4 books a week as a child, then depression hit, then immigration, money and space and house insecurity, and I stopped until pretty recently :) now I'm back babey

Tagging ANYONE in this, if you do do this, please tag me :)

[madame-helen]

[faisdm]

A guide to the cool parts of the Warhammer 40k Fandom

So, suppose you’ve heard Henry Cavill being out of both the DC movies and The Witcher is now planning to be in a Warhammer 40k thing, or you’ve seen stuff about the upcoming Rogue Trader or Space Marine 2 videogames, or been playing Darktide, and you might be thinking “Well... maybe it’s cool, but also I’ve heard the fandom can be scary and has a Nazi problem!” this is a quick guide to finding the cool parts of the fandom.

First off, the golden rule of 40k is anyone who thinks the Imperium are “The Good Guys” and misses the satirical elements of the setting should be avoided like they’re carrying Nurgle’s Rot (that’s a really bad plague...if that wasn’t obvious).

The Imperium of Man is a fascist religious oligarchy where people live on horrible polluted shitty planets eating “corpse starch” which is exactly what it sounds like, and everyone worships a mouldering corpse on life support because if you don’t, an inquisitor might arrest you for heresy and you’ll get turned into a frankenstein’s monster robot drone. Anyone who thinks that’s cool is definitely a pile of wank. Being shitty is the whole point of the setting; if it was a nice place, I wouldn’t want to send all the nice people to get shot with guns literally called “Meltas” that do exactly what they sound like they do, or get chopped up with chainswords (that’s a chainsaw-sword! No kidding!). It’s an outrageously shitty galaxy where bad people do bad things, but it’s exaggerated to such an extent it becomes kind of cathartic or funny?

There ARE people who play 40k who are total asshats, and a minority who are nazis, it’s true, and a real issue (just last year GW had to make a statement about it when people with nazi-themed armies turned up at tournaments and despite nearly everyone at the tournaments refusing to play with them, the staff wouldn’t throw them out because of “the rules!!!” so thankfully now the rules are “no nazis” finally), but there are also lots of really great people in the hobby too, and you can find them by looking for spaces that explicitly don’t welcome them. The more cool people are in the hobby, the better!

Cool 40k Youtubers who can be a gateway into the cool part of the hobby and finding cool people in it include:

Arbitorian - Makes great lore videos and even ones commenting on the problematic elements of the setting

Snipe & Wib - Couple who are in a ska band (and so are cooler than I will ever be) and make tongue-in-cheek lore retrospectives in their Codex Compliant series.

Midwinter Minis - Chilled out painting videos and fun, easy-to-follow battle reports, not gatekeepy, so great for beginners.

Dana Howl - Really cool and unique painting videos that don’t take the hobby too seriously.

Goobertown Hobbies - The Bob Ross of Warhammer.

Oculus Imperia - This absolute legend makes incredible, atmospheric lore videos in-character as an Imperial scribe discussing the historical events of the setting, complete with character development as he gets gradually disenchanted with the state of the Imperium. Chef’s kiss.

And a cool place to get news and stuff that’s explicitly trans-friendly and doesn’t welcome the shitty side of the fandom is Goonhammer. You can find starter guides to most Games Workshop/warhammer games on there.

So hopefully... if you’re looking for a taste of grimdark but with decent folk, that’ll get you rolling. I take no responsibility if you wind up spending a ton of money on little plastic people and paints due to this.

[sirobvious]

Every Baulder's Gate 3 character looks like if you took witcher 3 and jokingly, satirically made "if they slayed" edits of it

[arataka-reigen]

I'm not putting Frankenstein in this list because I already made up my mind to participate in Frankenstein weekly anyway.

Again, I reserve the right to go against the results of this poll but I will still try to be faithful to it

Brief synopsis for each of these books if any of you are interested in knowing more about it (probably not, but, oh well):

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time."

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.

The Witcher - The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (it's the witcher. idk what else to say)

Wayward Children - Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire: Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father--a crusading local lawyer--risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet: The story begins in the near future, as burgeoning population pressures force humanity to terraform and colonize Mars. After a brief but violent civil war between the two planets, the genetically engineered survivors begin a new wave of colonization, spreading across the galaxy. Everything is looking up for the human race... until the colonies encounter the Qu, technologically advanced aliens on a religious mission to remake the universe. Although humans fight valiantly, the Qu easily overpower humanity; as punishment, the aliens decide to genetically modify the survivors, turning most of them into mindless, animalistic creatures before departing.

The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin - After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy must have been a rare jellyfish sting--things don't just happen for no reason. Retreating into a silent world of imagination, she crafts a plan to prove her theory--even if it means traveling the globe, alone. Suzy's achingly heartfelt journey explores life, death, the astonishing wonder of the universe...and the potential for love and hope right next door.

PJO - The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (reread) - This would be a reread, i'm gonna do it sooner or later, but you get to decide if i do it sooner than later.

[totallynotajaskierhater]

Jaskier has a fursona tell me im a liar literally rn. thats all and gn.